helen-louise

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My mum & I will be in New York from about 6pm on Tuesday 29th January and available for socialising Wednesday or Thursday lunchtimes or evenings. I would very much like to introduce my mum to redbird, and anyone else who's available. My mum is much harder to feed than I am, but I'm sure we can find somewhere suitable. (Italian is fine as long as they can do vegan things that aren't salads - I don't eat salad in January! Also, if it's a lunchtime meal, I know there are several soup & sandwich places in the midtown area that specifically use the word vegan or vegetarian + dairy-free in labelling as I've seen them before - can't remember details of locations, though.)

Once again, I want Americans' phone numbers! Mobile/cellphone if possible, or whichever number is best to get hold of you at 3pm NY time on a Tuesday. I doubt I shall have trouble getting through Immigration when clearly travelling with my mum, but you never know - that side-trip to Las Vegas might mean that I'm running away to marry someone I met on the internet! I shall screen all comments to this post and unscreen any that don't contain a phone number.

Yay! It's really happening! Yay!!

These are various websites I've had open in tabs in my browser for awhile - as long as several months in some cases. So you may have seen them before.

Articles:
Meeting at Infinity: What Theists and Atheists Can Learn From Each Other. Was linked by... a whole bunch of people.

Separated at birth. Given up as babies and adopted by different families, it took these women 35 years to meet and discover they were identical twins. Linked by booklectic.

The Fantasy of Being Thin by Kate Harding. Linked by griffen and a lot of others. It is well worth reading even if you're nowhere near fat, because the "fantasy" and "magical thinking" she describes could be applied to many different aspects of our bodies. x_mass, you may find this triggery.

William McGonagall - one of the worst poets in the English language. Mentioned on irc by fluffymormegil. His poems are... unbelievably bad!

Short stories:
Anda's Game by Cory Doctorow. A story about gold farming sweatshops in MMORPGs of the near future. It made me cry.

Physics and Chemistry by Jackie Kay. Not sure that I could resist a lesbian love story with that title! It also made me cry, for different reasons. artremis and nitoda will love it.

Apparently, what I need to do to make myself less ill is arrange to go & see the doctor. Actually, it was a nurse that I saw. But she peered in my ears and throat and listened to my lungs. And apparently I have the classic symptoms of the current upper respiratory tract infection that's going around in this area, complete with the whole "not buggering off after 6 or 7 days like a normal cold would". I think my virus got scared into submission by how ill everyone else in the surgery was. It's nothing to do with the Covonia cough syrup I started taking yesterday, oh no... ;)

Covonia, btw, is THE most vile and disgusting cough mixture ever in the history of the universe. One of my ex-boyfriends used to like the taste of it because it made his eyes water & made him feel spacey. Anything that strong must be doing you some good. I've been taking it for years and years as it's about the only cough mixture that's suitable for asthmatics to use, and it has actual active ingredients. But it really is nasty.

The reasons I've been so bothered about being ill are 1) because a lot of my kids have exams next week and 2) because being self-employed, I only get paid on days when I am able to go to work. All of this week, I would have been teaching for 5-6 hours a day, and I've missed all those days of work. So I estimate that this illness has cost me ( Collapse )

Also, do I know anybody who actually likes Zest Vegan Pesto? It is "pesto" in which the only correct ingredient is basil. Apart from that, it has walnuts & cashew nuts (no pine nuts?), white wine vinegar (why?), apple juice (?!) and sunflower oil instead of olive oil. I detest sunflower oil because to me, it smells rancid even when fresh. I have this problem with the oil itself and with sunflower margarines - I much, much prefer rapeseed (canola), which smells buttery when fresh and like rancid butter when rancid.

Richard bought some "by accident" today. Well, we've run out of the stock of the lovely vegan pesto from Whole Foods, and he's never been to Whole Foods to know a) where the shop is or b) where in the shop the pestos are. It's kinda big, and it has a LOT of different types of pesto, and I had visions of him being sent to High Street Kensington and never seen again. So he went to the Fresh & Wild in Piccadilly-somewhere near work, and bought the only pesto that was obviously vegan - and it's this vile one which I told him never to buy again. Admittedly, the last time we bought it was was going on 5 years ago, and they've changed the shape of the jar since then.

We can't return it, because I opened the lid to check whether it was still as vile as I remembered - and almost threw up with the smell. And Richard put a clean teaspoon in and stirred it, then tasted a bit (but didn't put the spoon back in the jar). Neither of us wish to eat this alleged foodstuff. But there may be people out there who actually... *shudder*.... enjoy it, and if so I would love to put the jar in the post to them so it will no longer be in our house.

I make this offer sound so appealing, don't I? :D